Château Le Crock: Tasting & Drinking
My first encounter with Château Le Crock was many years ago now, as a prelude to a tasting of wines from Château Léoville-Poyferré, focusing on the 1980s and 1990s, an era which saw quality at Château Léoville-Poyferré improve in leaps and bounds under the tenure of Didier Cuvelier and his team.
Initially I saw no great change in the quality of the wines here. In subsequent encounters I found decent wines, full of colour, appropriately textured, but with no real excitement or panache to lift them to the next level. Considering the location of the gravel-rich terroir, which sits extraordinarily close to Château Cos d’Estournel, and with less illustrious but still more desirable names such as Château Haut-Marbuzet and Château Meyney not that far away, I could not help but feel that the wines should have been better than they were.
Of course these things take time, and naturally the prime aim for the Cuvelier family was the revitalisation of Château Léoville-Poyferré, which just a few decades ago was in a dreadful state, the wines of very poor quality. This they did, with great success, and it is today one of the top properties on the Médoc peninsula. And now the same degree of effort is paying dividends at Château Le Crock, with some good wines made over the last decade, especially so in the last few years.
At the time of tasting I thought the 2019 vintage was potentially the best wine the property has made this century, and the results in 2018 and the frosted 2017 vintage are both tip-top. Looking to prior vintages, both 2016 and 2014, the latter much more successful here in St Estèphe than it was further south, have also shown very well, the style sumptuous and outgoing, rich and well-structured, all of which seem to be Cuvelier traits. As for more recent vintages, there is consistency in the results; be confident in cellaring the 2022 and 2020 vintages, both will repay you. The 2023 vintage is also worthy of consideration.
When first published, many years ago now, this profile concluded with a note that this estate was a work in progress, although a work that was worth watching very closely. The die is now cast; the quality on offer here is high and consistent, and this is clearly an estate worth following, buying and drinking. (29/6/12, updated 27/1/13, 2/12/20, 16/12/25)
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